Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Buckminster Fuller and the Choice for Life

On a very humid Sunday afternoon I found myself looking for refuge in a very stark stone structure known as the Whitney Museum. I had heard that there was a Buckminster Fuller exhibition - and, by the way, it is worthwhile seeing. We had an excellent guide who took us through the wondrous world of ideas of Fuller whose work testifies to the power of art, imagination, and genius. However, as you enter the exhibit, on the wall there was a paragraph that brought a chill to me on this hot day that said something like this: After Fuller’s daughter had died, he considered killing himself, but there was an inner voice that seemed to interrupt all of this to tell him he had a greater mission in life. That he could actually do something great for humankind.

Buckminster Fuller realized that he had a choice, just like all of us, with the gift of life that has been given us. Yet we know from statistics that many do not make the same choice he made in a time of crisis. In a recent New York Times Magazine article by Scott Anderson entitled “The Urge to End It All” Anderson tries to make the case that while suicide is an opportunity to end one’s life, it is often a permanent solution to a temporary situation. The article seems to say that when the opportunity to take one’s life is foiled or hindered, second thoughts about living come up and, oftentimes, can change one’s life’s trajectory totally. Buckminster Fuller is a case in point. As I strolled through the exhibit and saw many drawings and models of futuristic dwellings, even a car designed by him, it was also noted that Stanford University holds four tons of his documents. The whole time I kept pondering over and over again in my head his decision to choose life.

For many of us it does not seem like a hard choice. Our fear of death and cowardliness prevents us from even considering the option. Even on a subtler level, not choosing life does not necessarily have to mean snuffing out your existence; it could mean making bad choices that in the end are self-destructive. It seems to me that we make choices every day that can be for life, creativity, and the enhancement of other lives that surround us. We can also make choices that diminish us and are self-destructive. In other words, we are wasting the energy and the moments given to us. The Old Testament offers these words of advice from Deuteronomy 30:19: "I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants.”

So, be a blessing, and life may surprise you.